What's Education For?

I am a teacher. I love my job and I need to tell you this is happening in schools. It is pushed for students to learn and understand life problems. We call it the "hidden curriculum". It is what teachers facilitate in their classrooms. Teachers put students in many situations and help guide them in appropriate ways. Or guidance about finding themselves and their interests. Or understanding money (which is definitely in the curriculum). You are correct it is NOT as blatant as this example and I wish it were more but your next video I would love to see your solution to this problem. The education system knows this is where we want to go. They just don't know how.﻿
I feel when children are going to school, they start to loose their curiosity of the World because all of it is explained by teachers who say that it is the truth without letting the child learn how to reason it out on their own.
Funny thing is, in my classes, the teachers tend to encourage us to ask but when we ask they say it is dumb or irrelevant. When we try to say that they may be wrong, they say that it's in the textbook or they know better than we do, which leads us to become scared to ask or wonder. We loose our sense of wonder through the education we have currently.﻿
I'm actually from the UK but yes. Kids can actually be very naive. I teach some kids and they seem to think they know more than the adults and that adults have never been kids or they're not as intelligent as they. It's really ewird and ironic. I know it's cliche, but kids need to just do as they're told, we didn't put these things in education for the sake of it or cos we want them to suffer; it's the exact opposite. We want them to leanr and have a rewarding future. we want them to do even better than WE did. I sat down and listened when I was a kid and it paid off ( although I encourage debating and public speaking too and building teamwork etc)﻿
I agree with the superlative importance of the proposed subjects of curriculum.
However, I would add two perspectives on 'What Is Education For?'
In the broad, philosophical sense, it is to increase human knowledge by sparing subsequent generations the burden of having to re-discover the discoveries of previous generations, since they can be learned faster than they can be re-discovered. This allows more time for further discovery. It is worth noting that we have long since reached quantities of global knowledge such that no person could ever hope to learn all of it even with thousands of lifetimes. So progress can only be made by specialists in their fields with little knowledge of what is happening in other fields. At present the various fields are still able to communicate with each other, but for how much longer? Computers help a lot with this, but how we deal with the difference between the static capacity of the human brain relative to the exponentially increasing quantity of knowledge remains to be seen. One can imagine capacity thresholds being reached and current upward trends plateauing. But perhaps artificial intelligence or quantum computing can extend the progression. In that case, one can imagine a world of dense technology all self-replicating with self-generating algorithms in which no human understands how any of it works.
The other, more cynical perspective I would share on 'What Is Education For?' is that, at least since the discovery of agriculture with allowed humans to produce surplus, humans have been looking for and finding ways to overtly or subtly 'enslave' each other in order to lay claim to that surplus, known in modern times as 'wealth.' The modern system, vastly more advanced and complex than previous models relies heavily on propaganda, control of information, to maintain an obedient and cooperative labor-farmed population, and the 'education' system is a primary means for dissemination of that propaganda.
So ask yourself, why does the state NOT already teach financial education about how capitalism works, about morality, relationships, etc.? You can suppose that of all the people whose job it is to think about what subjects to choose for educational curriculum, the relative importance of such subjects has never occurred to any of them, and that of the 7 billion odd people in the world, nobody has suggested any of them either. Or we can suppose that they have considered and rejected those subjects. If so, why? Well, there is very good reason to suppose that very powerful people believe - because it is true - that a financially and emotionally well educated, informed, and cooperative populace would not be in the best interests of the state. Perhaps they know that slaves work most diligently when they think they have been duped into thinking that they are free and in charge, and that too much education on certain subjects can get in the way of that delicate 'educational' process.﻿
I personally believe children and students should be taught to think for themselves. They should learn to debate, solve problems and be encouraged to develop themselves. Learning them "capitalism" or "the meaning of life" (or any subject focussed on accumulation of knowledge) would only result in a loss of interest. It would result in a bunch of knowledge and rules and books while students should be encouraged to define their own meaning of life. And above all, should not be forced to do it. Forcing
+TempoTap I agree with you - we can't have a school system which only focus on a special way of living. We need language, science, art, social studies etc. in our education - and not only "how-to-live-an-american-life 101". In Denmark, were I come from, we use a lot of time on being educated to think for ourselves + all the other things needed for university (I'm in the Danish edition of High School).﻿
+TempoTap Meh, I used to think that. But it's too late for that. There's too much knowledge; it's been growing exponentially. Nobody can acquire it or think it through anymore. Just little pieces of it. Tiny fragments of a vast ungraspable web. Self-generating computers are going to have to do the thinking for us so we can play sex and violence per our nature across the pristine brothel battle grounds of Eden. We just have to push another generation or two of brain-laborers to get the machines going.
Also, thinking for themselves is what people do without any education. Education has always been for preventing people from thinking for themselves, thereby preventing them from coming to the wrong conclusions, like that they are slaves. But it doesn't matter. Perhaps it was for the best.﻿
"we are wrong, children need to be shown how stupid they are, our curriculum is WRONG, we need to teach to avoid the pitfalls"
These videos make me feel claustrophobic, like there's a right and wrong way to live, and our current system, is of course wrong.
not just suboptimal, wrong.﻿